Strength Providing Exoskeleton (SPEx)

Abstract

Muscular degeneration is widespread not just in Pakistan, but also in other parts of the world. As people tend to age, limb movement becomes difficult. There are also many diseases that make limb movement an arduous task. It is estimated that 8.5% of people worldwide are elderly, and suffer some sort of motor difficulty. Also muscular diseases like Parkinson’s, A.L.S, multiple sclerosis, cancer et cetera affect 0.73 percent of the world population combined. The current solutions include medication and surgical implantations. Both these methods have a miniscule success rate. People with muscle degeneration thus do not have much hope of rehabilitation with the current solutions. One way of tackling this problem is by making smart and cost effective prostheses. The prostheses currently available are mainly for amputees. Prostheses for muscle degeneration patients are mostly in the prototype and testing stages, and haven’t been widely commercialized yet. These prostheses are heavy, inaccurate and mostly button controlled. Some exoskeletons have been commercialized for muscle patients, but they are very costly. SPEx is an exoskeleton (prosthetic arm) for elbow movement aimed at people with various muscular disorder like Parkinson’s, A.L.S, multiple sclerosis, cancer et cetera that provides rehabilitation at a very low cost with immaculate accuracy and portability. Therefore the key objective of SPEx is to produce a lightweight, robust and cost effective exoskeleton for the arms. The greatest quality of SPEx is undoubtedly its cost effectiveness. It costs a mere 15000 Rs for production. Along with this, it is immensely lightweight and easy to wear, a quality that most exoskeletons lack. To tackle the problem of button control in the current exoskeletons, SPEx is completely brain controlled. It determines the amplitude of the EMG and Force signals of a patient, attained using an EMG sensor and a Force Sensitive Resistor (F.S.R), determines the RPM of the motor connected to the exoskeleton using the K-Nearest Neighbour machine learning algorithm, and then applies the corresponding RPM on the D.C motor connected to the exoskeleton. The specifications that had initially been planned have been achieved. SPEx was aimed to be mind-controlled and accurate; it is 98.5% accurate, and controlled using EMG and FSR signals. This means that 98.5% of the times SPEx will cause the motor to move with an RPM that the person wants. Initially, it was desired to make the project cost effective; SPEx is worth only 15000 Rs, whereas the cheapest exoskeletons currently available cost thousands of dollars. SPEx thus provides an alternative for treating muscle diseases, which are currently only dealt with using medications and surgical implantations. As far as the contributions of SPEx are concerned, SPEx is the only exoskeleton for muscle patients that is worth a mere 15000 Rs keeping in mind its unique set of values like brain control and accuracy.